This is an amazing collection of short stories.
Samrat Upadhyay takes readers from the lower middle-class struggling to survive in Kathmandu’s deras to the reigning class’s lavish lifestyles. Stories are sometimes spiced with plots in the United States and India too.
The protagonists in each story have their own everyday problems to solve. Most of them have inferiority complex. They are, at the same time, disturbed with premarital and extramarital affairs.
I expected this book to be full of social miseries of struggling Nepalese middle class. That is well received. Upadhyay defies our expectations – he goes one step further by portraying human sexual desire in the backdrop of adversaries facing the characters’ lives.
Samrat Upadhyay’s stories are reminiscent of BP Koirala’s Nepali short stories – very powerful and full of colorful characters.
The book is sure to entertain and enlighten you.
Four stars out of five.